


linger

by archaeologies



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Live Action TV), Code Name: Sailor V
Genre: F/F, F/M, Past Lives, Reincarnation, Slight Canon Divergence, Unrequited Love, adonis is really nasty here, and minakos character from like, but i dont think he's nastier, but its influenced most by the manga and live action, follows the events of codename sailor v, he's always a nasty boy, like i mean than in canon, minako centric, pre-sailor v to post-dark kingdom arc, says nastier things than in the manga, uh some people die but its glossed, unclear which canon this is following
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 14:02:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8105173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archaeologies/pseuds/archaeologies
Summary: “Do you try to be like her?” Usagi asks. “Do you make yourself act like Venus?”





	

There is stardust in her veins. She knows this, because she feels it prick at her skin when she looks up to a sky, rusting purple as the moon burns behind the emissions of thousands of cars, its light trapped in the clouds of thousands of lives. It tugs at her skin, a gentle buzz inside her bones that becomes a force so great it splinters and shatters them. There’s a hunger that gnaws at her stomach and rises a firework in her throat, escaping her trembling lips as a sigh, when she realises the world above her is starless. There’s a hunger, and a homesickness. It’s cold, and human. The hunger is animalistic, all-consuming, desperate. The homesickness is a hand around her heart, squeezing it, shaking it, rolling it between fingers of ice and chilling her through her very core.

She doesn’t know what she misses. The are memories that linger just outside of her grasp, coated in the scent of burning metal, of gunpowder, though she’s never fired a gun. Silver hair fanned by a wind that should not be blowing. A girl, who, like the memories, lingers out of the grasp of her gloved hands; a gauntlet in ivory satin, the strongest armour she’s ever donned.

Urgency haunts her memories, her homesickness, her hunger. An echo of impatience in the back of her mind. It’s unsettling, unpleasant, and so she shuts her window and draws her curtains and looks away, looks down, because something is wrong with the night sky, and something is even more wrong with the way it makes her feel. She doesn’t like it. She doesn’t want it. She thinks, like a child, that if she shuts her eyes and hides then she can make it go away, but even then some part of her knows it never will. Some part of her knows this is who she is, who she always has been, and that the foreign sky, with brighter stars and planets that glisten only slightly beyond her view, and the scent of gunpowder that lingers before the invention of the gun, is just as much a part of her as the city that masks that sky from view in its burning haze of gases and pollution. One day she will think of that foreign sky as home.

Part of her already has.

 

 

Her science teacher tells her Venus doesn’t have a moon. She doesn’t know why, but the fact makes her heartwrenchingly sad.

 

 

She hates her name. It feels like it’s mocking her. How can she be beautiful, when her nose is too angular and doesn’t sit on her face properly, and her eyes are too close together, leaving too much of her skull exposed. Her hair curls around her cheeks to hide that, and her fringe makes her face look lower down than it is, makes it look almost normal.

Out of the corner of her eye, her dull, lifeless hair gleams a brilliant gold. Drips of fire stream from her skull in reds and oranges, but the second she turns her attention to it, it’s the same miserable brown it always has been. It’s wrong. Everything is wrong. Whoever is looking back at her in the mirror isn’t her, not really, not entirely. Her mouth curls when she tells it to, her nose twitches when she smiles, her eyes look where she directs them and her hands prod cheeks she recognises as being hers, and yet, something feels wrong, feels foreign, with her reflection. She sticks out her tongue and watches her trapped image follow suit, but if she closes her eyes and lets her hand rest on the mirror’s surface, the face she conjures, the face she expects to see, is not the same. It’s not hers, and yet, it’s more her than the girl who watches her when she opens eyes that should gleam blue.

Minako imagines stronger shoulders, broader shoulders, a soldier’s shoulders, and a thinner face. She can’t change the jarring disposition between who she is, and who she’s convinced she is, but she can soften it. She catches the liquid gold that flows through her peripheral vision, and she recreates it with a burning scalp and a nose clogged with ammonia. She doesn’t get the colour quite right - the initial bleach couldn’t displace the brown in it’s entirety, and the dye is a softer, more natural orange than the obnoxiously fake yellow the box advertised - but it’s a step in the right direction, a similar sensation that shows the potential to live up to her name, to live up to the standard set by someone far more beautiful that Aino Minako can bring herself to feel.

Her parents hate it, of course, but soften their words when they see the newfound confidence it inspires their daughter with. Minako hears them say she almost seems like a different person. She wonders if, perhaps, she is.

 

 

A boy transfers into her class. He tells her she would look better with a bow, but, as her hands lace it with expertise they shouldn’t have, and it rests heavy in her hair like a forgotten, phantom limb, some part of her understands that she isn’t tying it for him.

When he dies by her hands a little while later, it isn’t strange. It isn’t strange that she’s thirteen years old and has just vaporised someone she thought she loved. It isn’t strange that a cat showed up in her bathroom, speaking words she understands in a voice she knows, a voice she realises she’s been missing, and promises her a princess. What’s strange is that, for over a decade, she’d convinced herself that it was possible to live a life where it wasn’t necessary to fight, wasn’t necessary to kill, because it feels so familiar to her now. After one day, it feels more natural than breathing, than blinking, than being. Her new name tastes like a blissful memory, sounds like a song from her childhood that, despite not hearing for years and years, pours in beautiful melody from two open lips - her lips. Being Aino Minako has a purpose suddenly, a glorious purpose, and she’s cowering suddenly under the weight of commands bestowed upon her centuries ago, and shaking with yearning to complete them. She’s able to exist in this strange crossroads, balancing her past life with her present, letting old and new memories mingle into one, a fusion of a teenage earthling and an eternal deity. She feels at peace with herself, both her selves, who form this one, unique person, who experiences things unlike any other being ever can. She enjoys it, relishes in it, and in this newfound popularity, this newfound confidence. She jokes about giving it up - she’s almost serious, at one point, when Kaito Ace blows her away with impeccable timing and a good, sweet heart - but she thrives. She’s forgetful, sometimes. Being in between two lives, two existences, is suddenly normal, suddenly right, and the disciplined soldier she was can’t entirely disperse the scattered one-track mind she’s grown used to and indulged in this lifetime. She lets her existences mingle into one being, and she lets herself be that person, and she loves it.

Eventually, though, it becomes agonisingly lonely. Caught between a rock and a high place, except both the rock and the height are her, and she doesn’t know if she wants to be associated with any of them. She’s grown up with bad television dramas and manga, she knows the heroes have to keep themselves hidden, and it’s not difficult to refer to Sailor V as though she’s someone else, but she can’t hide from the looks Hikaru gives her when she accidentally whispers of royalty, she can’t hide from the comments her sharper, stronger serves in volleyball get her, she can’t hide from this steady feeling of unrest, like everything she’s fighting now is just practice, like when the real enemy is here, she won’t be able to face it alone.

She gives up on volleyball. The captain is confused by her resignation. She can’t tell her that it’s because she has an unnatural, inhuman advantage over everyone else she plays against. She says she’s just struggling and needs more time out to study. Hikaru observes that she’s more tired lately, that she keeps murmuring daydreams of Silver Millenniums, of moons and magic, and that she needs to get a good night’s rest.

“Maybe this Sailor V stuff has really gotten to you,” she says. “I mean, a beautiful hero running around, saving the day! I bet you just wish you could be her! I know I do!”

Minako nods wearily, and feigns agreement. She does not say that she has spent her entire life wishing she could be her, and is slowly coming to regret that wish coming true.

 

 

She gives up on idols, eventually. She gives up on Aino Minako. Living like that, trying to balance out earthly normality with her mission, with her memories, with her real self, is far too hard, too distracting. After fighting so many of them, they leave a bitter taste in her mouth anyway.

Artemis says she should leave the curtains open when she sleeps, that the full moon will comfort her, but it hurts her just as much. Something, someone, lives in it’s light, and lingers in her mind, and she clenches her fists in frustration as she tries to remember them, tries to work out why forgetting them hurts so much.

Routine becomes simple. Sleep, eat, school, try to remember, forget, fight, sleep. She relearns battle plans she was taught aons ago. She slowly grows used to the pressure of her chestplate against her shoulders, perfects the fluid motions she needs to invoke in order to attack, and she lies awake at night, wondering.

She presses hands, human hands, against her eyes, and images of a palace made of pure pearl, gleaming in immortal splendor, sift through her thoughts. She can hear exactly how her footsteps echo on its marble floors, can see her reflection in the polished stone. There’s laughter too. Ethereal laughter, that sends her heart spiralling. A hand in hers, a larger, softer hand, gripping onto her gloves. A swirl of liquid metal, a dress made from moving mercury, from flowing silver, from crystalised moonlight. Strands of wispy, white hair that Minako feels she can reach out and touch, soft breath on her neck, against her cheek, her lips.

She doesn’t realise she’s crying until she peels her sticky palms away from her face. She rolls over onto her side, and sobs. Artemis snuggles up against her, a familiar warmth, a reassuring presence, and she’s grateful for the company, but knows it's not the company she needs.

 

 

Amano says she’s overworking herself, and it’s clear because it’s taking a toll on how beautiful she is. Minako doesn’t have time to care about things like that anymore, but she forces a bitter smile, and tries to act like a ditzy thirteen year old, and not a military strategist with centuries of training and expertise. He offers to tutor her, gets a little too close, his fingers dancing dangerously along the hem of her skirt. Her brain immediately summons sixteen different offensive maneuvers that would leave him unconscious just long enough for her to get home, and her hand twitches towards her transformation pen, acting on instinct. She sighs. She forces her impulses down, she says thanks, but she’ll be fine. Hikaru points out Minako could use the help, her grades really are slipping.

She bunches her skirt into her clenched fists. She adds studying back onto her schedule, but she’s already stopped caring about this mortal body, this half of her existence. High school, work, it’s all meaningless. She knows it’s meaningless, someone told her, something is telling her. She just wishes she could remember what.

 

 

Words she’s heard before, words she recognises, places she recognises, people she recognises... Her mind is a maelstrom of chaos and confusion and through it all, through the pain of someone else’s life forcing itself into the forefront of her mind, he’s laughing. He’s laughing and she hates it, and it hurts and she doesn’t know why, doesn’t understand why.

“You are a child,” he scowls, and she swallows bitterly. “A crude imitation of her, of Venus’ chosen soldier. And yet, at the same time, you are her, and so you will fall by my hands. That’s your destiny.”

Everything feels so familiar, but she can’t work out why. The ground trembles as walls crumble, and when she pushes herself away, tries to push herself up, tries to sit so she can force herself into a fighting stance, the tiles making up the floor peel off under her fingers. This has happened before. It burns behind her eyes, a building, a fortress, a castle, pulled apart at the seams and tumbling down.

“You really have no idea, do you?” he scoffs. “Oh, this is priceless. The look on your face right now... That’s better than any look of admiration, any fake love, you could ever give me. The fact that you’re going to die here, with no memory of her,” he pauses and shakes his head. “After everything the two of you put me through, I can’t think of a more fitting punishment.”

Minako doesn’t understand. She’s a mess of emotions that she’s had or is having, she’s lost and alone, and the world is shattering around her, quite literally. He’s standing over her, but someone is screaming her name, her real name, Venus. They’re begging and calling to her, and she’s promised to fight for them, to protect them, like she promised to protect him. She’s going to fail again, she’s always going to fail. Her boiling stomach freezes in fear, and she bites her tongue lest she scream with the agony of remembering everything and nothing all at once. Someone she loved. Someone she loves. Her hand is grasping something, reaching out, a sword? A distant scream... Venus? Leader? Yells, desperation. Princess? Guardian? Her gloves no longer feel like gauntlets; they’re heavy with grease and oil, and no one can hold them because they’re so slick. She let go of someone she loved. She let go of her, and now she’s letting go of him. She can’t hold onto love. She can’t... Why can’t she? Why can’t she protect the people she loves? Why can’t she remember them?

A window shatters. Is Minako watching it, or is Venus? Is Venus pushing herself to her feet, or is Minako? Kaito smiles crookedly, but  behind him, before him, Mercury clutches Mars’ lifeless body, and coughs dust and debris from her lungs, and points to the corridor behind her and begs her to run, to find someone, to save someone, and blasts an ice colder than that which has settled in Minako’s stomach, and Venus turns on her heel and runs, despite the pain and the confusion and the anger and the heartache, despite her shattered whip and bursting bones, despite everything, because there’s someone more precious to her than anyone else in the entire universe, someone who is her universe, and she would endure a thousand torments worse than this to keep her alive.

Serenity.

Whether it’s the sheer intensity of remembering, or the act of remembering itself, that awakens her, she feels herself split into a shower of stars. She’s reborn, resurrected, a phoenix from the flames, and the heat of Venus itself pumps through her heart, through her veins, through her core. Long, golden hair glistens as if the sun itself gave it shine, a gem-studded belt sews itself around her waist. Her uniform is new but familiar, the uniform of a soldier sworn to the moon, the uniform she’s always remembered, always known. She breathes, raggedly, angrily. She’s infuriated that this is what it took to remember Serenity, to feel this love that has ravaged her entire existence for centuries, but also shaken with the memories, with their warmth, with their impact.

Killing Adonis hurts. She really thought she loved him. She curses herself for thinking it, and he curses her love life, and he dies, and it’s her fault, but she can’t dwell on it; there will be plenty of other deaths, and plenty of them will be her fault. She understands now, she understands it all so perfectly. The hollow emptiness that lived within her sense of purpose is gone, and she can feel them. She promises Artemis they’re out there; the other guardians, their princess, everyone. She’s humbled in her connection to their presence, humbled and grateful for it, for this sense of belonging, for this clarity.

Adonis had told her to be thankful. She no longer has to make the choice between putting her love or her duty first, but that night, as she looks up at the moon, she knows that her love always has been her duty, and that isn’t about to change.

 

 

Natsuna gives her the opportunity to continue her work, now that the Dark Agency are defeated. She busies herself with petty criminals, working alongside the police, and Natsuna becomes a caring confidant, who listens to her rambles of other lives and worries of never finding her comrades. She glosses over Serenity, tries to downplay her importance, but Natsuna is a smart and resourceful woman, and Minako is a fool in love.

She doesn’t get an office or desk for herself. She just goes where the wind takes her. The whole department know who she is - how could they not, when they’re working alongside her? - but they quickly get used to having the avatar of Aphrodite flit around their workplace.

When a phantom thief who attacks silently in the dead of night and is only ever spotted wearing a mask, cape, and tuxedo, starts terrorising the jewelers of Tokyo, Natsuna says the case has her name written all over it.

 

 

Serenity is even more beautiful in this life than she had been in their first. Minako swallows back centuries of fear and love, and steps towards her. She tries not to let herself feel hurt that Endymion got there first again, tries to ignore the moments she’s seen between them, tries to put them out of her mind. Mars is taller, more reserved, this time around, and Mercury is smaller, anxious. Jupiter hasn’t joined them yet. Minako knows where she is, is thrilled by how she’s just as courageous and strong-willed as ever. They’re all so different, and yet, they’re the same, and she loves them.

They don’t remember her, yet. If she can stop the Dark Kingdom quickly enough, maybe they’ll never have to. She doesn’t want to burden them with her existence. It will get them hurt.

“Sailor Moon,” she calls, her voice unwavering in spite of her quivering nerves. A trio turn in synchronisation. Serenity’s hair is shorter, darker, but her buns are just as messy as they were on Silver Millennium when she tied them without Venus’ help. Minako wants to smile, but knows she has to stay serious, play her role. She shakes her head back, and stands purposefully in her old uniform, her unawakened, but recognisable, uniform. She’s thankful for her mask - protecting the princess from a distance would be difficult if she noticed her on every street corner.

“Sailor V!” Serenity’s face lights in excitement. Mars’ eyes narrow in distrust, and Mercury reaches for her pocket computer.

When Serenity steps towards her she warns her not to come to close. “I’m only here with a message,” she keeps her tone level, regal. She needs it to be, if she’s going to play the part of princess and keep Serenity safe from both the knowledge of who she is, and the hostile attention that will attract. “Stay away from Tuxedo Mask. He’s dangerous.”

She can feel Luna’s ‘I told you so’ hang in the air, and turns and leaves before Serenity can finish spluttering out her disagreement and protest. She pulls a hand to her chest, and runs. She transforms as soon as she knows it’s safe, and sinks to the ground as Aino Minako, biting back tears. The look on Serenity’s face was all she needed to see to confirm that they’d already fallen in love. That she is nothing to her once again. That she’s worthless, unloveable.

Burying her face in her hands, she remembers Adonis’ curse. She wonders whether this is what he meant, that she was doomed to watch Serenity fall in love with a man who’s destined to destroy the world with her again and again and again, and be helpless to stop it, despite the fact it’s her duty to stop it.

Endymion, in this life, has no idea what he’s doing. He’s scared and afraid and awakened half too early, the same way she did. A child with a past life that should have waited for him to find it, but grew impatient and banged the door of his memories down too soon. He’s going to get himself captured by the Dark Kingdom, just like his generals, if he’s not careful. Maybe he already has; she foiled more than enough attempts of his to find the legendary Silver Crystal to justify assuming such.

She sobs. She hates this planet, his planet, she hates how much she’s given up to protect it, to protect someone who can’t care about her. She wants to go home, but she doesn’t know where that is anymore. Is it Earth? Venus?

She thinks about contacting Hikaru, but she stopped being Aino Minako a long time ago, and doesn’t know if she can force herself to be her ever again.

 

 

“I used to do your hair like this on Silver Millennium,” she whispers. “Do you remember?”

Silk slides between her fingers and pools on her brush. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

Every inch of Minako is bitter steel with envy, but she swallows her jealousy and her pride, and she promises they’ll get Chiba Mamoru back. And she will. She’ll do anything to make Usagi smile.

 

 

Distancing Serenity from Usagi is impossible. The two are so tightly interwoven into one person, one person who thinks the same and acts the same and makes the same mistakes on Earth they did in another life on another planet, that Minako can hardly believe she’s been reincarnated at all. It’s more like she’s been transported here, brought here, and her caring, gentle soul has remained the same, her morals have been untouched by the views of another world. She’s so familiar, so comforting, so homely, that every battle Minako fought just to spend a moment by her side is worth it, even if those moments are tinted with the stale pang of unrequited love.

“Do you try to be like her?” Usagi asks while the two of them are alone at the Crown. “Do you make yourself act like Venus?”

Minako plays with her skirt, and laughs slightly. “I’ve been Venus for so long that it’s hard to remember how to be Minako,” she admits. Her hands shake as she tucks a strand of fading orange hair behind her ear. She takes a deep breath. She doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t want to overwhelm Usagi, doesn’t want to burden her. She’s such an inspiration; a soldier and princess and Usagi all at once. Minako couldn’t be Minako in the heat of battle. She’d forget her sword or get distracted and someone would die and it would be her fault again.

Usagi pouts. “I bet Venus didn’t like video games and manga, but you do.”

“I used to like idols too,” Minako smiles sadly. Usagi’s eyes brighten. “I wanted to be one, for a long time.”

“Ah!” Usagi gasps. “Minako-chan is so pretty! She’d be such a wonderful idol!” She clenches her hands together, and holds them against her heart. Minako feels her cheeks heat up a little. “What kind of songs would you sing! Oh! You’d play such a good superhero in television dramas! All the training from your time as V-chan would finally come in handy!”

She laughs. “It already did; it let me protect you.”

Usagi’s frowning again. “Mina-chan, that doesn’t count.” Her nose wrinkles when she frowns. It reminds Minako of a rabbit. She thinks Tsukino Usagi is the perfect name for her princess.

She remembers, for a moment, how long she has been bitter about her own name. She wonders if Usagi’s words are really true. If the most precious person in the world thinks she’s beautiful, maybe Minako can convince herself she deserves her name.

“Let’s go back to mine,” Usagi says, sticking her lips out thoughtfully. “I’ll show you my favourite idols, and you can sing and dance! Oh, and you can finally tell me how the sixth volume of the Sailor V manga ends, since I could never find that one!”

“I don’t know,” Minako sighs. “Shouldn’t we-”

Usagi takes her hand, and every part of Minako explodes into anxiety and bliss all at once. She closes her eyes, tells herself not to make too much of it, inhales, and opens to see Usagi watching her with an expression of excitement that’s also tinged with sadness.

“Please, Minako-chan,” she breathes softly. “Everyone else got to have another life here. I want you to get yours.”

Minako’s lips tremble, and she nods, blinking back tears. She let’s Usagi lead her home. She doesn’t tell her that it’s the moments she spends with Usagi that make her feel the most like Minako. She doesn’t tell her that seeing Usagi exist so flawlessly and fluidly in both worlds gives her hope that she can be Minako again. She doesn’t let herself think of things like that.

In this moment, she wants to be nothing but Aino Minako. She lets herself live again, and it’s more liberating than anything Venus could have dreamt of.  

**Author's Note:**

> if you're interested in my writing, you can find out more at megidolaon.tumblr.com/post/146309834661 , or message me for details !


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